Windows Phone OS Updates

Please, please do NOT ask when your update is coming (unless your phone's update has officially rolled out and your phone isn't getting it and you need help troubleshooting why). Your post will be removed.

Smartphones are becoming ridiculous*. I'm not trying to start a circlejerk but I blame Android and their struggle to put the hardware specs on steroids to make the fact that you're running a sluggish, fragmented, ad-company OS a bit more acceptable. It's taboo for a phone to have a few extra hairs of thickness but for chrissake it should be so humongous it shouldn't be able to fit in a pocket. Anything smaller is automatically low-end so you're stuck with an impossible compromise.

We don't need huge 5" or 6" phones. I think 4,5" is too big! We also do not need phones that want to be big to stay "relevant" but totally miss the point. Let's just not try to take phones where tablets should be. That's a dumb idea. There should be phones, tablets, and maybe a few crossovers for avant-garde geeks but there should be a clear difference.

Windows Phone must become the go-to for real people who want a reasonable sized not-too-small-but-not-too-big (let's say ca. 4") phones that pack high end design and functionality for reasonable prices. I think there's a niche for that building up.

High-end shouldn't mean super-sized. Windows Phone phones should be the ones where you would say "it's smaller than the new Anroid Galaxy Octo Core GeForce HiggsBoson 8,3" but it's the right size AND it actually has great specs"

Make the Lumia 620 or the 8S with (slightly) better processors/ram, higher-resolution screens, and better cameras and they will sell better than Lumia 920 and 8X combined. That's my opinion.

The reason that small = low-end and big = high-end is because of size. OEMs just don't have the space to put everything that a high-end phone needs in a small phone and still be able to deal with the heat that it creates. If you open up any flagship phone you'll see that there isn't a lot of extra space in there, and that making it smaller means giving up components or amplified heat issues.

Apple is the one exception to this, and they can do it because they only have to design one phone per year (if that, as the 4S is essentially the identical design to the 4), spend a lot more time money and effort on industrial design, and use custom-manufactured parts rather than off-the-shelf chips.

OEMs just don't have the space to put everything that a high-end phone needs in a small phone

Why not make them bigger in the other way then? I don't mind thicker phones. Feels nicer in the hand. I don't know how those things work but it's hard for me to imagine there's so much difference. Are high end processors, GPU and RAM that much bigger than low end?

Some components will take more space (for instance, wireless charging, NFC, LTE), but size isn't actually the biggest issue, it's heat and battery usage. More powerful CPU = faster battery drain and more heat generated, both of which require more space to be able to deal with.

Thickness is two things. One is that people don't really like thick phones. I fall pretty squarely into that camp. I wouldn't want something thicker than the N4, though I wouldn't mind something with a bit bigger of a screen. But thickness also doesn't help with heat dissipation nearly as much. And then keep in mind that phone components are more or less 2D. There's almost never any stacking going on in the phone. Minimum thickness is basically determined by the thickness of the thickest component (usually the battery or camera) + material thickness + screen. Making it thicker lets you put in a bigger battery or camera, but it won't help with placement of components.

Let me just tell you, as a 920 owner myself, it is nowhere near as big as you think. It will fit in your pocket just fine... Unless you wear skinny jeans, but if you wear skinny jeans and you don't have a purse, that's something you should look into correcting anyway.

The z10 is almost the exact same size as the Lumia 920 (which is a bit wider and a tad bit thicker) but the screen is .3 inches smaller and the exact same resolution. I don't see how the z10 is a perfect example when the 920 isn't when they are, for all intents and purposes, the exact same size. But the z10 has nearly a full inch less screen real estate than the Lumia 920.

Also the point he makes about Features v Size is spot on. Aside from the camera and (Physically?) smaller battery the black berry boasts more hardware features into a more compact design.

But the z10 has nearly a full inch less screen real estate than the Lumia 920.

Argument is useless as some people prefer the smaller screen, just as you and others prefer the larger lumia screen.

The argument is that the larger phones are usually touted to be larger because of hardware (screen size aside), yet the blackberry shows the 8x and 920 up completely in terms of number of Features v Size

Such as? There wasn't even one mentioned in the video. Unless you mean more RAM and a mini-HDMI out port as "packing more hardware features". But you would be the only one.

The video was only in reference to visible size. It would take two minutes to find out the extra features:

Removable battery (often touted as a preferable feature in reviews)

Micro SD slot

HDMI

2 GB Ram

For some of these things Nokia (and other manufacturers) have stated that adding to the phone would increase the 920's size, yet the Z10 has them and has a smaller form factor.

People prefer smaller screens for smaller phones, not because they just want a smaller screen. That doesn't make sense.

Pedantic. A larger screen size (and ergo handset size, happy now?) isn't always preferable, whereas better internal hardware and extras are more often than not desired. For example would you prefer a 920 with a Micro SD slot?

Personally I agree with you but the fact is: most people on the face of earth love the big screen. You see Galaxy Note, such a bulky device, have very good sales. Many regular people don't make phone calls today, so, why not a big-screen for better viewing and touching? I don't have to put it in my pocket for waiting phone calls, so size isn't a big deal. OEMs always follow the market leader, and Samsung has the best sales, so OEMs follows the Samsung model.

It is a lot like laptop industry. 13-14" is the best size for regular people in terms of portable working, but regular people tend to buy 15" because they don't need that much of portability.

Yeah, this is what I came here to say. You may not like this increase in size, but the trend is moving towards that because a large group of people are buying this. My dad specifically loves the Lumia 920 (which I also have) because of the size, and says he could even go to a slightly larger phone and be okay. I love the size of the 920 as well, and I think it's perfect for what I need.

However, I used to love the iPhone 4 that I had before, and didn't think I would ever need anything bigger. However, after using a Lumia 920 for 4 months, if I pick up an iPhone 4 now, it fits weirdly in the center of my palm and I'm not a huge fan of that. The point being that I adapted to my new phone and I love it a lot more now. Bigger is okay with me.

The laptop example I agree slightly less with. People buy models based on what they prefer for a laptop. You see business laptops that are 17" (albeit rarely), and that's because the person wanted that size. Sure, you mostly see 13-14" business laptops and the larger laptops are personal use, but I think the line is a lot more blurred in that regard.

Smartphones are becoming ridiculous *. I'm not trying to start a circlejerk but I blame Android and their struggle to put the hardware specs on steroids to make the fact that you're running a sluggish, fragmented, ad-company OS a bit more acceptable. It's taboo for a phone to have a few extra hairs of thickness but for chrissake it should be so humongous it shouldn't be able to fit in a pocket.

was an unnecessary aside.

Phones can and should be any size. Any size. There should be no "that's too big," there should be no "that's too small." When we start putting limits on the design of an item, we start losing creativity and we start losing diversity. The Galaxy Note line is wonderful for what it is - a large phone meant for people who want a little less talk, a little more business.

I like larger phones. I have big hands and anything less than 4.5" feels cramped for me. There are those with small hands who think otherwise. No big deal.

The Galaxy S3 - 4.7" if I remember correctly - is one of the best selling phones on the market. The iPhone 5 - 4" I believe - is the best single selling phone on the market. They're on opposite sides of the size spectrum. There is no perfect size, there is no ultimate crowd-favorite size.

Now, on a more serious note, you are right, but you are also wrong. I'm sorry to tell you this.. it may come as a surprise to you, but... people are fucking stupid and they are driven by strong sheep-ish feelings.

People buy things because other people buy things, not because they like them. People buy things because they don't have anything else to buy.

If people stop buying things they don't need or don't like, then companies will start listening to those people. Because some devices are selling well and a business plan is working, then they will not change the devices and the business plan.

Also Windows Phone is not considered such a great OS and is not considered worth of risking millions of dollars in order to change the hardware platform.

I used to think that 4.3-inch is too big, but now... not so much. 4.5-inch is actually too big, and I don't even want to go beyond this as any phone bigger than 5-inch is simply stupid. The 4.8-inch in the Galaxy S3 is also too big.

TL;DR: Companies are not going to change a hardware platform and an entire business plan because of a few complains from a bunch of hipsters.

Good sir, do you even READ /r/android? I say this as someone who owns an iPhone 5, a Nexus 7, and am eagerly awaiting Sprint's WP8 devices. I have no particular disposition toward any platform, but I won't touch /r/android with a thirty nine and a half foot pole.

I do in fact. I make a habit of reading /r/windowsphone, /r/android and /r/apple, I suspect because I'm secretly a masochist. I'd say /r/android is the best of the three, as it can take criticism on occasion (/r/apple straight up can't, and /r/windowsphone gets its knickers in a twist sometimes. I got downvoted for saying it was a bad call to remove turn by turn navigation from WP8! Yes, I know it's in Lumias. Plus there's the strange and ridiculous mentality of 'well, I don't need those hipster apps like instagram, so therefore there's no problem with the WP ecosystem')

/r/android only gets really stupid when they start talking about the Apple vs Samsung patent lawsuits.

edit: what frustrates me is that /r/windowsphone is an order of magnitude smaller than the other two. Smaller communities are generally smarter and can have better, more civil conversations before they grow and get overrun by trolls. I just can't see that here - /r/windowsphone is overrun by groupthink.

I once made a post expressing a bit of anger over the fact that iTunes 11 still had not released (and we were hours out from the first of December at the time), and I got downvoted to oblivion over it. I mostly stay out of smartphone subreddits besides this one, because fanboyism is rampant.

But this one does have its moments. Like the iPhone 5 release? Oh dear god. Everyone was whining that the Lumia 920 had that thing outgunned in every respect. It got ridiculous.

I guess it depends on whom you ask. I'm one of those who thinks Instagram is a useless app for insipid self-centered college age kids to post grainy pics of their morning coffee, but I want to see it on Windows Phone just the same because it will help it gain legitimacy and marketshare. As a long time Mac user, being a member of a population of users of a platform struggling beneath marketshare titans isn't new to me, so maybe I can more easily forgive fanboyisms than you. I also find them more tolerable in the underdog vs. the platforms with huge marketshare.

He's got a point. Android has lots of great qualities. I enjoy my Nexus 7 tablet very much, but there is a certain absurdity to Android in the constant oneupmanship with cores and ghz and screen size. It's even reflected in the increasingly bombastic names they come up with that sound like sex toys or condoms. Android has become a bit of a caricature of itself. There is something to be said for taking a deep breath and stop adding power and size to everything for a minute and ask where else there is room for improvement. Android is like the American full size truck/SUV segment. Lets keep getting bigger and stupider with more chrome and idiotic dick measuring. Enough already.

I have seen enough of these type of complaints that I agree with you (just want to be clear right off the bat). Smaller-screened phones with high-end specs would, I believe, sell well (Android users complain about this, too).

However, I would just like to point out to people that the opposite demographic exists, and not just from a "me-too", "bigger is better", "keeping up with the Jones'" crowd. I would love a 5" phone—not because it's "bigger and badder" or "better than yours" or some such nonsense, but because it is more useful and enjoyable to me and the added size wouldn't bother me in the least. So, while I agree that powerful phones with smaller screens need to be made to target the tastes/preferences/requirements of certain customers, I am not one of those customers.

The fact that companies don't seem to be making them makes me wonder if my type of preference is indeed the dominant one. Of course, has any phone manufacturer actually tried to create a small high-end phone to see how well it sold? Of course, here's the other concern: the paradigm has been set. If company X were to release a small-screen super phone, it would probably still be perceived of as an inferior phone because screen size has become the primary identifier for class of phone. Unfortunately, it might be hard for a company to break that paradigm, which may doom any ventures into the realm of small feature phone before they can gain traction.

On a related note: personally, I find it odd that people quibble over the weight of a smart phone (like the 920). I mean, the 920 is 4/10 of a pound—I think my belt is heavier than that—and at that, is only about a tenth of a pound heavier than, just for example, the Galaxy S3. I'm not trying to be trollish, but how in the world is 4/10 of a pound even something worth wasting breath or writing space on? Are people that weak that this is an issue? Maybe there's some situation where that extra tenth or 2-tenths of a pound matter, but I can't think of it. (I welcome anyone who can give me the argument/perspective from the other side of the fence.)

I blame Android and their struggle to put the hardware specs on steroids to make the fact that you're running a sluggish, fragmented, ad-company OS a bit more acceptable.

The high hardware demands of androids may have played a role, but mostly it's just competition. The hardware race continues on even after the likes of jellybean.

We don't need huge 5" or 6" phones. I think 4,5" is too big! We also do not need phones that want to be big to stay "relevant" but totally miss the point. Let's just not try to take phones where tablets should be. That's a dumb idea.

The thing is, a lot of people disagree with that - you see it in the Galaxy Note sales alone.

Nowadays, smartphones are being used much more as miniature computers than as phones, and such usage benefits from a large screen size. It's a very common comment, when switching to a larger phone, that "the old phone now seems tiny" and "I can never switch back" - indeed, we already see a similar phenomenon with the Lumia 920.

It's the combination of the hardware race, and peoples' willingness/preference toward larger phones, that is driving the phone sizes up. If people will buy it, and it's cheaper to produce larger phones, then the oems are sure as hell are not going to try very hard with the small ones.

I actually got to test it for two weeks. Did not like it. Windows Phone 8 was fucking "WOW!" but the phone less than "meh". HTC has a better strategy with a cheap and a high-end choices. I think the 820 would have been a better phone if it were cheaper. The camera isn't anything special, the build quality is questionable (you can hear the battery if you gently shake the phone), not even gorilla glass, not to mention the horrid resolution. Sluggish performance wasn't the criticism of Windows Phone so to bet on the CPU alone is wrong.

I'm not saying the 820 isn't a great camera, it is. I'm just pointing out that it isn't just a smaller version of the 920, there are significant differences. I love the 820 though and I came close to getting one due to the size factor.

I suspect it will still have a large screen though. I don't see Nokia taking any chances by making it iPhone sized. It will probably have a similar screen size to the 920, just be thinner and substantially lighter.

Why not go with the 820 than? The only major difference between the two phones is the image stabilization with the camera. The 820 also has a removable battery, you can freely change the color of the phone whenever you want, and has SD card slot.

I feel like the regular person has been converted into thinking they want a larger phone. The phone manufacturers couldn't continue to pack the features people wanted into the smaller size, so they made people think that bigger is better. After 20 years of the dumbphone race to small sizes, I was surprised to see that they could actually shift the demand to go the opposite way.

The way they did it was to put the best features in the larger sizes and push them as something you don't want to live without. People become technology apologists, overlooking obvious annoying things, when they justify new features. But over time, those new features become ordinary and they remember that they weren't so excited about the tradeoff to begin with. People will want small phones again. A whole 50% of the population wears pants that the current generation of phones do not fit in the pockets of. That's just one practical tradeoff, but there are many more, like how people lost the ability to use their phone one-handed.

I thought that Nokia was on the forefront of this when they released the Lumia 800. It converted me from Android. I still love my phone, but I would have gone to the 920 already had it been the same size as the 800. That said, I'm just one person that really cares about the form factor above all else. Most people just want the best technology and and (for now) will overlook the size and say "it's not bad after a couple days of getting used to it".

I don't think people have been converted against their will though. I think the trend for larger screens is driven by people who really do want larger screens. 4.5 to 5.0 is large, but once I used them something like the iPhone became hard for me to go back to. The larger screen makes the phone easier to use even factoring in the loss of the ability to use it with one hand. Text is larger and clearer, buttons are easier to press, the keyboards are much nicer to type on.

I'm thinking that possibly one day people will have larger phones that are around the galaxy note size. These phones would be more powerful and people would use them as their primary computing device, connecting them to keyboards and monitors as needed and taking them on the go. What size these devices will end up being I don't know. As you mentioned fashion has some effect on this. Devices will have to be small enough so that people can carry them around without thinking about them. For me that is 4.5-5". However, advances in hardware could make way for foldable phones or phones with larger screens but less bezel so they aren't bigger than current phones.

The actual phone functionality of cell phones have become less and less important. Phones are now communication devices instead of phones. People are going to want to do video chats, text, email, IM, social networks, etc on their phones and for those a larger screen often helps.

Unfortunately this phenomenon is not limited to Windows Phone. It's everywhere except Apple.

I think Apple has a great point as far as a form factor that allows anyone with an average hand size to easily use the phone one handed and reach across the screen with their thumb. I love my Lumia 920 and I wouldn't trade it for any other phone on the market, but using it one handed isn't very graceful. I'd love it even more if it were small enough for me to do so without sacrificing the resolution or any other features.

Sadly the smartphone world seems to be moving towards retard sized phones. If you want anything under 4.5" or so that isn't a compromised mid-grade or low end piece of shit you can have an iPhone or nothing. I think that sucks.

It seems like Europe is still a little more sane than America and Asia when it comes to phone size. I'm hoping that last bastion of sanity holds out and as a result the one-hand friendly premium smartphone isn't an endangered species. I'm worried though. The stupid sized phones seem to be gaining a foothold even in Europe now...